Be a hero to your customers – keep the lines of communication open.

It’s Tuesday night, and your customers are making a bee-line home from getting the ever ‘nutritious’ grilled chicken dinner from KFC. There’s no time to cook dinner because the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars and all its sequined splendor is about to grace the television screen. Kate Gosselin has just made everyone cringe throughout her routine with Tony Dovolani, and now, the football player formerly known as Chad Johnson, aka Ochocinco, is preparing to cha-cha-cha with Cheryl Burke.

Your customers have laptops in hand ready to cast their allotted 11 votes, and suddenly ‘the page cannot be displayed’ error surfaces. Refresh. Quick bang on the side of the computer. Expletive. Shake of the broadband modem. There’s no Internet connection. Grab iPhone. No signal. In ‘dire’ times like these, the inevitable has happened, so how will you be prepared to update your customers that there are technical issues on your broadband network?

Technical Support to the Rescue

Most customers have a tendency to immediately contact technical support to determine if technical or maintenance issues are affecting  their service. They primarily look to the technical support team as their first line of contact, so keeping the lines of communication open with technical support is essential in easing the worries of your customers.

Contrarily, if technical support is able to detect possible outages from customers calling in with issues or from other monitoring that is completed, you will be immediately notified and can in turn act upon updating your customers. Your customers will at least be thankful for the archaic ‘telephone voting’ on DWTS, but can you imagine trying to place 11 votes for your favorite team on lines that are always busy?

De Office, de Office!

Because your CSRs are so friendly and don’t mind talking about the pollen storms that have given us all faux-yellow vehicle paint jobs, some of your customers will opt to contact your office directly. For those who do, placing an announcement on your IVR that provides informational updates on any maintenance or outages will keep your office from being bombarded with calls. Premium technical support phone numbers that can also be customized with IVR announcements are available as well.

Not having to listen to the Yankee Doodle Dandy hold music waiting to speak with someone will allow customers to divert their attention back to Erin Andrews doing a back flip while fox trotting. Okay, maybe not fox trotting, but perhaps she and Maksim Chmerkovskiy will try to shake things up a bit. It could happen!

Ready or Not, Here Mail Comes

As another line of defense, email blasts are convenient notifications for technical issues as most people seem to find a way to be able to check their email. Whether its from a smartphone (that actually has a signal) or calling Aunt Linda who refuses to get rid of her WebTV, email will be read by any means necessary. Your customers will be relieved that their computers are not having a ‘mid-life crisis,’ and they won’t have to use their emergency fund to purchase another one.

Breaking the News

Although breaking the news to your customers that you are having technical issues is not something that you look forward to, it will happen, and being there to ensure your customers are informed allows them to weather the storm and be optimistic about the level of service you provide. There will be disgruntled customers and nonchalant customers, but ultimately, how you handle updates and notifications for these unfortunate events will impact your customers’ perceptions and maintain customer loyalty.